One of my recent custom projects was a large set of dragons. While I've made many incarnations of the dragon before, I used this opportunity to really experiment with some new techniques and add additional mediums into my dragons.

The most notable addition is the scalemail along the back of each dragon. The aluminum scales were an interesting change of pace with learning how to incorporate these directly into the fabric of the piece. I tried several different ways of threading my stitches into the scales before finding a way to get these to lie uniformly across both sides of the spine.

The second added touch was changing the boning on the wings to incorporate pipe cleaners. These give it a much more posable adaptation compared to the tubed boning I'd used before, and the experience with the wire is a great cross-skill that I can use in projects down the line.

This spring, I will once again be showing my work in the Tilsner Building for the St. Paul Art Crawl! I'll be debuting my BB-8 and R2-D2 coffee sleeves as well as showing some of my paintings from the end of 2015. My completed flower series will all be there, which are much more captivating in person. For baseball fans, it is the start of a new season, so I'll have some MN Twins-inspired gear as well.And as always, I'll have coffee brewed and ready to go! I'm showing again on the third floor.

The show will be:Friday, April 22: 6pm-10pmSaturday, April 23: 12pm-10pmSunday, April 24: 12pm-5pm